Guide rails are components in common every day use, such as for drawers in desks or cabinets, and for industrial use such as pull-out storage shelves at the warehouse, cash registers at the supermarket, automated teller machines at the banking kiosks, electronic equipment at the telephone switching stations and so on. These guide rails provide frictionless rolling means and they enable us, for example, to pull out our drawers with little effort, and to reduce the pulling force required for operating the cash registers or shelves at the warehouses.
Guide rails are provided for drawers to be either partially or fully opened. For other applications, such as the automated teller machines, they may have to be fully pulled out from their chassis for purposes of regular maintenance. In the latter case, over travel is typically provided by the guide rails.
In most applications, these guide rails are preferred to be compact and allow maximum use of the available space. The primary requirements are their strength and rigidity. In most cases, these guides are thin and wide, and are usually installed vertically because of their greater rigidity in this position. However, when installed in the horizontal position, the strength and rigidity are very much reduced. Other requirements may be the ease of installation and/or alignment.
The cost of a guide rail is also an important consideration. This depends on the construction of the rail such as on the number of components, manufacturing costs and/or installation costs.